Technical Writer

In an earlier blog I covered how people get jobs as technical writers, but what skillset do you require? I mean, suppose you have decided technical writing is the career for you, what skills are useful in the field?

The skills required for technical writing fall into the following main areas.

• Writing
• Editing
• Communication/people skills
• Project management
• Attention to detail
• Technical skills.

Each of these rates a blog to itself, so I’ll cover them over the next couple of weeks, but here is the surprising thing. Writing ability is not the most important of these skills. In fact, it comes quite low on the list.

Skills required vary with the role and type of work you are doing. A good division of skills (compared against writing) comes down to something like the following:

If you work in the IT industry—and possibly other industries as well—you will notice that these are fairly standard requirements for most jobs in IT, whether it be developer, analyst, tester, project manager, team leader.

So does this mean if you don’t have these skills yo should not try for a career as a technical writer?

Of course not. My own skillset would be something more along the lines of:

What it does mean is that if you are weak in a particular area—project management, for example—you should hone your skills in that area.

It also does not mean that just because I rate writing as one of the lesser skills required, you can be a bad writer and still get the job. More of that in the next post.

Last Modified : November 21st, 2006
Filed under : Tech Writer
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